A Good Day to Recap Die Hard

On the heels of the premiere of A Good Day to Die Hard, we offer a film-by-film analysis of the seminal series.

After a six-year hiatus, Bruce Willis is back as Officer John McClane in the fifth installment in the epic action movie series Die Hard. Since 1988, McClane has fought sharp-suited thieves, terrorists, money-launderers, and plenty of vaguely ethnic bad guys, and even though he's hopped a plane or two in the past (often just before they explode), this is the first time he'll leave his home turf, heading to Russia to lend his CIA-agent son a hand in bringing down a nuclear-weapons heist. It's possible that the rest of the plot won't make much more sense, but who cares, really? After all, it didn't make sense for Hans Gruber to hold up Nakatomi Plaza on the night of the company Christmas party when the building would have been empty the following day, and that didn't stop the very first Die Hard from blowing 1988 away.

What's that, you say? Who's Hans Gruber? What's Nakatomi Plaza? If it's been a while since you've revisited the Die Hard saga, click through our timeline. We'll bring up to speed before you can say #YippeeKiYay (yeah, it's got a hashtag now).